Official Luthiers Forum!

Has anyone tried Bow River Woods flexible abalone purfling? It claims to be made in Japan and is very reasonably priced in Canadian dollars.
I have ordered form these guys on several occasions and all the products and service were excellent! I'm hoping this will solve my dilemma of trying to find Zipflex in Canada.

https://www.woodtoworks.com/Flexible-Ab ... 12398.html

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Guitar Building = Continuous Improvement Process

Is there a reason why you'd like to avoid solid abalone?

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

Stuff was always a little too homogenized for me. I liked the old fashion way of breaking the abalone shell into round. Add to that the thickness is .050" instead of .040" with a backer. How thick is the backer? the abalone has got to be awful thin to be able to bend...almost as if it were NOT abalone? Abaloniod?
But then, to each their own...

Brent .. its not that its thin enough to bend .. its actually pieces of abalam that are only about 1/8 long inside the strip, they are maybe 30-40 thou thick at most - so they are short enough to bend and leave gaps .. it bends because the side purf and backer are vinyl like plastic, and when bent reveal small gaps between the small pieces of shell ... then you fill all this with CA ...

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Guess I'm Brent .. that would explain the homogenized look. Pretty non-descript or generic looking, no drama.
Thanks for explaining that Tony. I've never seen a strip and I'm over the hill now...

Update: The Japanese imports are definitely not like Zipflex.

Installed one in my rosette over the weekend and they are very thin pieces stuck to a blue piece of adhesive tape with no side purfling. A bit unruly to work with as it did not want to bend smoothly and a few pieces popped off the tape and had to be pushed back in manually.

Zipflex is a far superior product.

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Guitar Building = Continuous Improvement Process

I have not tried the Bow River stuff but I have used zipflex on a few and I can't say enough good things about it. It might not look like the real deal but it's close enough and incredibly easy to install.